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Sturm und Drang

Jonathan: Three days of still and sun – the first this year in which we’ve felt warm without having to do some kind of active work – just stand still and soak it up; the sunshine of so early in spring is so precious! That said, we were busy, not least in collecting a full trailer load of seaweed from Smercleit Taobh a Deas for our compost heap. It was lovely to be on the beach with sound of gentle waves on the sand, the voices of many species of wading birds (the original social twitterers!) and the plaintive cry of curlews. The seaweed smelt good, it looks good pile up like that, and don’t we just know for sure that all that goodness is going to turn into the best ever potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beans …. ! Back in the garden, at the end of day, a tub of early daffodils by the front door is swaying in the breeze: a thin veil of cloud has rolled out across the sky, thick enough to dull the light, thin enough to ensure a cold night ahead. The breeze picks up as night draws in, and by the time Tilly and I are back from our late evening walk there are already broken flower heads strewn on the ground. The weather forecast is for a week of stormy weather, and with that returns a hopeless frustration of all outdoor work. Here in the islands, the consumerist economic model of contemporary life, urban and anodyne, is still utterly trumped by the forces of nature. The stormy blast, the mighty seas, the vast weight of a leaden sky, the unforgiving rocks: these are the powers that be, the forces to be reckoned with, the force majeure against which there is no claim or defense. Life here is still as earthily romantic as it was two hundred years ago, when the Outer Hebrides provided inspiration for the poets, novelists and composers of the Romantic Movement: to them the tempests and turmoils of life – auf Deutsch bekam es ‘Sturm und Drang’ bekannt – were the episodes of a life worth living. And I for one would rather this life than that of red tail-lights streaming across the the dark void between office and home, computer and TV.